Cnooc Has High Hopes for Gas Find

Chairman Says Field
In South China Sea
Is a 'Breakthrough'

By

Shai Oster

Updated July 19, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

BEIJING -- A major recent gas discovery deep under the South China Sea could reopen a frontier for oil and gas exploration that some multinational companies abandoned decades ago after shallower wells turned up dry, said the chairman of Cnooc Ltd., China's biggest offshore oil producer.

The discovery, announced in June by Cnooc's Canadian partner, Husky Energy Inc., is a "tremendous breakthrough for us," Cnooc Chairman Fu Chengyu said in an interview yesterday. The statement was the first time that Cnooc, the...